To Make an Heiress
by coincident
Summary: ..."Mr. Hyuuga," said Itachi, in the polite but final tone one uses to close an extraneous board meeting. "Give me six months, and I promise that I will make your daughter into the perfect heiress."
1. Chapter 1

**A/N**: Every ficwriter has that high-school AU which really just isn't good, but occupies a special place in her heart nonetheless, despite the fact that she has since moved on to bigger and better things.

I'm just here to cash in on mine.

Enjoy!

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In the life of a company president, of course, there were all sorts of days.

There were days that went by so unobtrusively they could barely be considered days, just idle sets of hours sliding by like necessary beads on a rosary. There were days that went well, and these seemed to pass by quickly enough to trip over. There were days that were just to be gotten through, in the way that power outages and the waiting period for microwave dinners were things to be gotten through.

But sometimes, and worst of all, there were days that just exploded in your face. They did more than that--they exploded in your face and somehow left you alive to gawk at the shrapnel, file the insurance reports, make halfhearted appeasing noises to your publicists, and go home to outraged family members demanding how the hell you managed to let the day explode in your face in the first place, because if they'd been in your situation, well, they'd have found fifty thousand effective ways to explode right back, and let's see what that day planned on doing then.

Hiashi was just winding up one of those days.

His face was impassive as he flicked his wrist and sent another completed report to his outbox. Nothing in his expression betrayed him; his features composed a solid wall of granite, but when he happened to glance over at the newspaper tacked to his message board, a crack appeared, and a single vein twitched next to his eye.

For Hiashi, this was tantamount to a raging fighting stance, or perhaps a whooping war-cry. He managed to be grateful that his secretary wasn't around. She had already had two nervous breakdowns that month as a result of that dangerous, unpredictable eye-twitch.

He glared at the newspaper. In his addled state of mind, he imagined that the newspaper actually glared back, but as it lacked essential optical components to execute a proper glare, it did so with its phenomenally huge, almost mockingly tacky headline:

HYUUGA HEIRESS: PRINCESS OR FROG?

And if the headline itself constituted a metaphorical glare, the picture below it was like an accompanying punch to the gut. There was his little Hinata, which in itself was fine, but he could have lived without seeing a full-page spread of his eldest daughter sprawled in a champagne fountain, her face the color of a traffic light and her soaked dress bunched up around her knees, while an irate man brandished the remains of a ruined glass statuette over her head.

Hiashi groaned aloud and buried his head in his hands, hiding his spasming eye veins from sight.

It wasn't as if Hinata tried to get herself into these scrapes. She had never been a troublemaker--if she had, it would have been manageable; the media loved to see some spunk in their up-and-coming gentry, and he knew of more than one company that would have loved seeing a 'sassy' young leader at the helm of the Hyuuga firm. Troublemakers were brash, untrustworthy, romantic, sexy--they often grew into incredible leaders. Troublemakers would have been something he could handle. Hiashi loved things he could handle.

But Hinata wasn't a troublemaker. If anything, she was something a few degrees removed--a clumsy, incompetent, and mostly useless _klutz_--and even that Hiashi could handle, as he'd seen more than a few of his less-than-able relatives packed off to harmless boarding schools in tropical climes that were extremely hard to reach by plane, train, or any other standard media outlets that would enable said relatives to embarrass him. But Hinata wanted to be a good heiress. She really did. And she tried, showing up at all the events she was supposed to and trying hard to make sense of elaborate company policies that barely made sense to Hiashi on the best of days.

Stil, it was hard for anyone to evade the face that she simply wasn't equipped to be an heiress. She suffered from a terrible condition: she was..._kind_. Hiashi was sure she had suffered some sort of exceedingly rare and dangerous mutation before her birth, or that someone should have kept a closer watch on his wife during their early years of marriage, because there was no way any child of his could be so diabetically sweet. Hinata couldn't live without apologizing to anything every time she did something even vaguely incompetent--which was mor eoften than one would think, because he had yet to discover if his daughter had any skills in any capacity whatsoever. Once Hiashi had even seen her apologize to a desk.

A desk. For what, he didn't know. She might have left a ring on it from a coffee cup.

But she was trying hard to be the Hyuuga heiress, and for that, Hiashi had allowed her to present one of the classier merger awards at the annual banquet the week before. She'd looked lovely, standing at the side of the podium with her fingers curled around the elegant statuette.

For half of the evening, Hiashi had been focused on those fingers. It wouldn't have taken much for sweat-soaked palms to slip, to drop the statuette, for his hopes to shatter into a million kaleidescope pieces all over the Japanese businessman and the waiting newspaper cameras. It also wouldn't have taken much for those little fingers to snap closed in some involuntary muscle spasm, dismembering the pretty statuette in front of all the world and their brothers-in-law too--

But Hinata had kept her fingers dry and relaxed, and when she approached the businessman, smiling that admittedly winning smile of hers, Hiashi had allowed his own muscles to relax slowly as well, fiber by fiber, gently, gently, until Hinata did the utterly unexpected--and paradoxically, so utterly _cliche_, goddamnit--tripped over her dress, launched the statuette into the businessman's face, and fallen head over eight-hundred-dollar Jimmy Choos into the champagne fountain.

And then the newspaper story had come out, mocking as they always were, and Hiashi had to deal with no less than three exploding days, one right after another. After plotting several elaborate, painful, career-derailing alternative futures for the journalist who'd penned that idiotic headline, Hiashi had calmed his raging nerves (all except the ones at the corners of his eyes). Hyuugas did not get mad. Contrary to popular opinion, they did not get even, either. No, Hyuugas got something altogether more logical, and sometimes, more difficult.

They got what they wanted. Even if they had to not only swallow their pride, but masticate it, digest it, and break it into tiny particles of acidic nothingness before they could proceed with what was necessary to accomplish that. This was exactly what Hiashi had done when he had called the Uchihas and asked for their acting vice-president, who was now due to arrive in--

"Mr. Hyuuga?" crackled the intercom. "Mr. Uchiha is here to see you."

Hiashi's head snapped up from its self-indulgent position of misery on his desk. He glibly slid an entire sheaf of incriminating paperwork, including some suspicious-looking FBI documents, straight into a wastebasket and positioned the violet orb that was his Hyuuga paperweight on the edge of his desk, so he seemed indolent and wealthy (at least one of which he was). "Send him in," he roared at the intercom. His secretary must have complied before he had even issued his command--he would have to look into some psychologically scarring mental torture for her later--because not a picosecond later, the door clicked open and Itachi Uchiha entered the office.

"Take a seat," said Hiashi, gesturing with his hand. Unfortunately, it came out as more of a stabbing motion.

Itachi ignored his host's barely-contained violence and complied, inclining his head politely before sitting down. His eyes flickered once around Hiashi's office, resting briefly on the newspaper tacked to the board, before coming forward to meet the Hyuuga president's. His glance was as clean and efficient as the subject line of an official e-mail. Hiashi's eye veins begin to dance again.

"Good afternoon, Mr. Hyuuga," said Itachi. "I'm glad we were able to meet in person to finalize our agreement."

"You haven't changed your mind, then?" barked Hiashi. He didn't mean to, but the young Uchiha's pretty face was more than a little unnerving. It was the first time they had ever spoken in person outside of a company dinner, and at those, the boy was constantly surrounded by his doting relatives and brat of a little brother. Hiashi had never actually seen him conduct business.

Itachi did nothing at all, but Hiashi got the paranoid impression that he had somehow smiled without his seeing. "I don't change my mind, Mr. Hyuuga."

Hiashi backpedalled. "I mean--are you secure on the terms of the agreement? I don't want you backing out later because of some idiotic misunderstanding of the--"

Itachi reached into the inner pocket of his suit jacket and withdrew a sheaf of papers, handing it across the desk to Hiashi.

"I took the liberty of asking my lawyer to draft a contract," said Itachi. "Konan is discreet, and I think you'll find that she is also quite thorough. Please see if it is to your liking."

A contract! Hiashi was consumed by the sudden urge to gnash his teeth in fury, preferably on one of Itachi's body parts. But as the boy had mentioned, the contract was good. Everything Hiashi had asked for was laid out in precise terms, with one exception.

"Where's the marriage clause?" he snapped.

Itachi's eyes widened slightly. "I beg your pardon?"

"Not like that! I told you--I don't want your family thinking this is some kind of arranged marriage, Uchiha. I'm not planning on giving my daughter to one of you, and particularly not--"

Hiashi had to remind himself to calm down. Much as he hated to think of it too hard, it was the Uchiha doing him a favor in this case, and he had to act accordingly.

"I understand," said Itachi, looking slightly relieved. "Don't worry, Mr. Hyuuga. We're not interested in a merger with Hyuuga, particularly not of the marital sort."

Hiashi had to marvel at Itachi's class. The outrageously offensive statement had been delivered so neutrally, without a single dangerous inflection, that it came out sounding like the most reassuring of compliments.

"But I'm happy to allay your fears," Itachi offered. He removed a pen from his pocket, moistened the tip--a fountain pen, what boy even carried one nowadays?--and penned a couple of lines on the back of the contract. He blew gently on the ink and swiveled the paper around so that it was facing Hiashi.

_Clause Seven: The arrangement between Itachi Uchiha and Hiashi Hyuuga is not to be considered a marital agreement, pre-marital proposal, or preemptive engagement of any sort for Itachi Uchiha and Hinata Hyuuga._

Below it was a neat, flowing signature.

Hiashi took the pen and signed underneath it before Itachi could change his mind. Itachi smiled for the first time, then offered his hand. They shook on their deal. Hiashi filed the contract away to make the relevant copies. Then he looked at the boy across his desk, who was rising from the chair.

"Are you sure you can do this?"

Itachi looked surprised at the question. He didn't seem offended, just sincerely surprised that anyone would have asked him that.

"I'm the best," he said neutrally. It wasn't a boast. It was just a fact.

Hiashi Hyuuga, whatever else he was, was a man who respected facts. That was why he'd chosen Itachi for the task he had in mind in the first place--because out of all the heirs he knew of, of companies, of institutions, of businesses, of clans Itachi was nothing less than the epitome of what an heir should be. He was the child every man dreamed of siring, and with luck, he would turn Hinata into someone who was at least worthy to stand in the same room as him. It had never been done, to his knowledge. But when a child was failing math, you brought in a tutor, right? If a child needed dance lessons, you got her a dance teacher, right? So if a child didn't know how to be a heiress, what could you be logically expected to do?

Hiashi struggled to find some way to phrase what he was thinking. "Itachi…my daughter…"

"Hinata?" said Itachi. For the second time, his eyes flicked over to the newspaper. He eyed it for a moment, then smiled gently at Hiashi. "Really, Mr. Hyuuga. I'm sure you worry too much."

"But you must have heard about the incident at--"

Itachi chuckled. "Of course. Look at her--only eighteen, and making headlines. Phenomenal publicity, and without any duplicity whatsoever on her part."

Hiashi frowned. He hadn't really thought of it that way. "Are you sure?" he asked again.

"Mr. Hyuuga," said Itachi, in the polite but final tone one used to close an extraneous board meeting. "Give me six months, and I _will_ make your daughter into the perfect heiress."

**~X~**


	2. Chapter 2

**A/N:** Please note: because a six-year age difference scares me, Itachi and Hinata are only three years apart in this story.

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When he was fifteen, Itachi Uchiha's picture was in _Fortune _as part of a filmstrip layout for "50 Businessmen to Watch in the New Year." People watched. Within the next year, his picture was in the magazine again, this time solo, and on the front cover.

He'd been photographed in his office, standing straight as the buildings visible through his window. One index finger was levelled at the camera like a polite sort of accusation. "He's Got You in His Illusion," the headline read, somewhat unprofessionally. Fortune usually hated that sort of gossipy, salacious hook. But it was inevitable with Itachi. The young heir was eye-catching enough to make housewives stop in their tracks and pick Fortune off the racks in the checkout lines, dazzled, not quite believing they were about to go home and harbor inappropriate thoughts about something in a business magazine.

His father, Fugaku, made note of the fact and gave him a star role at press conferences, where the teenager sat quietly at the panel and handed out sentences that functioned as verbal doses of electroshock therapy. When he wasn't talking, press aficionados caught snapshots of him creasing a memo with his manicured nails, or fixing his linked necklace under his tie. At any given moment, he projected an atmosphere of effortless concentration and unparalleled, glittering competence.

Itachi Uchiha was sexy. He was talented. He was at the top of his game. Everyone who could be said to know anything knew it--it was a fact of nature, a star in the sky, a mantra echoed through board rooms across the country and the world: _Itachi Uchiha had it made._

Which was why Hinata actually screamed out loud when her cell phone flashed _Itachi Uchiha Calling_ on its little liquid-crystal display.

Since she usually never made any noise whatsoever, a huge chunk of the dining hall turned around to stare at her. Ino swore loudly, and Sakura, eating across from her, dropped her coffee into her soup.

Hinata felt her shoulders shaking. Of course, she'd been warn--_informed_ that Itachi would be contacting her to finalize their first meeting, but there was just something so unnerving about the sight of his name, on her phone, and the potential fact of his actual voice, travelling through the airwaves from his mouth, sparkling along the nerves attached to that trillion-watt Uchiha brain of his--

Hinata started to sway from side to side in her seat.

_Pick up the phone! _she ranted at herself inside her head. _Do it! It's not scary! It's not as if it were--you know, Naruto or something--_

The thought was so terrifying that the only recourse to banish it was to pick up the phone and hit the green button and say "Hello?"

"Good morning, Ms. Hyuuga. This is Itachi Uchiha speaking."

Hinata squeaked.

"I hope I'm not interrupting anything."

Hinata badly wanted to say that he was interrupting her peaceful growth process of eighteen years, but the thought of all those syllables made her feel dizzier than she already did.

"N-no," she assured him, then immediately wanted to stab herself with her fork.

"I remembered that it is the lunch period at Konoha, so I felt it would be a good time to contact you. You may know I also attended your school three years ago," Itachi continued blithely. Hinata actually took the phone away from her ear for a moment and stared at it. _You may also know? _Was there actually anyone alive who didn't know that? Most Konoha students could recite Itachi's registration number, his class schedule, and the bibliography of his senior thesis by heart; knowing that he was an alumnus of the same school was simply juvenile.

"I-I knew that," she whimpered into the phone. Sakura, who was fishing the Starbucks bottle out of her soup, raised her eyebrows. Ino vaulted out of her chair and came to sit next to Hinata, pressing her ear into the other side of the phone.

"I apologize for the short notice, but I was only recently able to clear my schedule. I am ready to meet with you at four o'clock today, at the uptown Uchiha residence. My brother will be escorting you. Do you know him?"

"Who the _fuck _doesn't know Sasuke Uchiha?" demanded Ino loudly, right next to Hinata's ear. Horrified, Hinata launched herself away from her, muttering apologies to Itachi.

"That's all right, cellular calls receive all sorts of interference," said Itachi. "Would you feel comfortable with that arrangement, Ms. Hyuuga?"

Ino scribbled "CALL ME HINATA" on a notebook page and held it up, managing to somehow add hearts and kissing symbols on it in the second-long interim between writing it and waving it in Hinata's face.

"C-call--" Hinata swallowed. "Call me Hinata," she said.

"How kind of you, Hinata. Will I be seeing you at four, then?"

Sadly, the potential sight of her father's eye veins if he learned she'd chickened out was far scarier than the thought of dealing with Itachi's calm, regal voice for an hour or two. So Hinata said "Yes." Without stuttering.

"Excellent. Oh, additionally--I have heard you are quite talented with ikebana arrangements."

"I-I just press them, they're not fresh--"

"I would enjoy seeing your work, if you would bring one today."

"I-I... " Ino was staring at her with her mouth open. Hinata shut her eyes. "Okay."

"Thank you." A chuckle. Then, "Make sure it's one of your best."

As if she needed reminding!

"I will see you at four, then. I will inform Sasuke to meet you at the private parking lot after school ends, and he can take you to your residence to gather anything you need."

"Okay... "

"Until then, Hinata." _Click_.

Sakura and Ino didn't waste any time. They didn't even need to ask. They just drilled her full of holes with their eyes.

Hinata started to shake again. This was even scarier than--

"You have ten seconds to explain," snarled Ino. "GO!"

"Eep!" cried Hinata. "M-my--my father hired I-Itachi to give me lessons, I think, on how to be a better heiress, because I'm n-not one! You remember that fi-fia-fiasco at the banquet the other n-night! And I-Itachi is, well, he's perfect, so my father thought he--well, they signed this contract, and--"

"YOU'RE GETTING MARRIED?" shrieked Sakura, apparently deciding that the conversation needed more juicy sound-bytes to fling across the entire dining hall.

"No! No! N-Nothing like that!" Hinata plunged her hand into her schoolbag and brought out the folded sheet she'd been staring at all morning. Sakura snatched it from her hand, Ino ran around the side of the table, and they scanned it together in breathless silence.

"Damn," sighed Ino finally. "Marriage protection clause." She pointed to the penned-in lines at the end. "I know about those."

"I don't want to ask exactly what you know about them, Ino-pig," said Sakura. "So, Hinata, you're just sort of training? With Itachi Uchiha?"

"That's right... "

"I'm not an heiress, but don't you have, like...personal trainers or something to help you with that stuff?"

"Stop being jealous, forehead bimbo!" screamed Ino. She turned back to Hinata. "Don't you have like, personal trainers or something to help you with that stuff?"

"W-well yes, I think we do...but Father thought I might learn better if I spend some time with someone who does it--you know--_right_. And Itachi is--"

"Sexy as hell," said Ino bluntly. "This is amazing, Hinata. You have the chance to get into that boy's most delicious-looking pa--"

"Don't corrupt it, pig!" snapped Sakura. "It's sweet and innocent! It's like the Princess Diaries or something."

"I-I was actually thinking of Pygmalion, you know, where the--except for the falling in love bit, of course--"

"What is the point of this except for the falling in love bit?" demanded Ino, completely ignoring the contract in her hand which had explicitly laid out what the point of it was.

"She's already in love! With Naruto, remember?" Sakura gestured behind her, where the blond student was sitting a few tables away and seemingly shaking a noodle out of his ear. "Although seriously, Hinata--you want to put in a word for your loyal friend, while you're balancing plates on your head or what have you?"

"That's actually a good idea," said Ino. "Not the plates. Itachi Uchiha, mmm..."

"Those eyes..." sighed Sakura.

"That hair..." groaned Ino.

They both turned expectantly to Hinata, who turned red. She realized she wasn't going to get away without contributing something to their pointless enumeration of Itachi's virtues. To her surprise, she was actually able to say something she honestly felt.

"I...I liked his voice."

**~X~**

"I didn't like her voice."

Itachi could practically hear his brother gnashing his teeth into the phone. "I asked you what you thought of _her_, Itachi, not her _voice_--what are we, female?"

"It was a rather feminine question, Sasuke. You might wait until I have a bit more data to work from."

"You've met her! Isn't that enough 'data'?"

"I was eleven. She was eight. It was a formal banquet. And you scared her away, remember?"

"She was annoying!" A pause. "She's not still annoying, is she?"

"You are the one who attends school with her."

"Itachi!"

" She has some problems speaking openly," admitted Itachi. "She stammers. I am sure some would find it endearing, but I found myself frustrated."

"Why, because you're not used to actually talking to someone who doesn't have a stick up their--"

"You know Father screens all your calls, Sasuke, and I would hate for you to have to explain to him what exactly you meant by that last comment."

Sasuke swore at him and Itachi listened contentedly to the display of brotherly affection for a while, then cut their conversation short. "Much as I would love to continue in this vein, I have some personal matters to attend to, and I'm sure your lunch period is over by now."

Itachi heard his brother ask someone the time and then bash something, probably a table.

"It seems my assumption was correct. Until later, then, Sasuke. And please don't be late to meet her after your classes are over."

Sasuke hung up in the same way he had slammed doors as an adolescent. Itachi put his phone down and smiled. Then his brow furrowed a little at the thought of what he had planned for that afternoon.

_Let's see how you do today, Hinata Hyuuga._..

**~X~**

Sasuke Uchiha had Uchiha family crests monogrammed into the leather seats of his car. One of them sported the legend "UCHIHAWWW '09!!!!!!!!!" keyed into it in enthusiastic scratches.

"That idiot Naruto," muttered Sasuke, noting Hinata's glance. "He did it when we became seniors."

Hinata hadn't noticed it when she had gotten into the car, but getting in for the second time at the Hyuuga mansion, she saw it clearly in the bright sunlight of her street. She reddened compulsively at the mention of Naruto's name, then turned to look out the window when it became clear that Sasuke wasn't amused.

She was lucky she didn't have to talk to him for long--her last memory of actually speaking with him was of a less than pleasant banquet--because he drove like a caffeinated lemming, and they reached the Uchiha residence in a disturbingly short period of time. Sasuke opened the door for her sullenly, like a little kid who had been told to do it (probably an accurate description, now that she thought about it) and ushered her into the foyer of the mansion.

"Itachi's at college now, but he's lived here all his life," he told her. "So if you want anything, you can just ask him. He knows where everything is."

Hinata's heart was hammering away so loudly she barely heard Sasuke's voice, because Itachi had just come down the staircase and paused, hand on the railing, irrationally reminding of her of a beautiful princess in a storybook.

She didn't even have time to be insulted on his behalf at her inane comparison before he extended his hand, unsmilingly, but with a grave courtesy that was somehow better than a smile.

"Hello, Hinata," he said. "It's nice to see you again. We've met before."

She thought it was considerate of him not to mention that they'd met by means of Sasuke pouring tomato juice on her head, screaming that he hated girls and one of them wasn't going to sit next to his 'Tachi if he had anything to say about it. Someone had seated them beside one another at a banquet, thinking it was cute--two little heirs, like a matched set. No one had ever done it again.

"I-I remember..." Hinata tried to wipe her sweating hand discreetly on her skirt, then gave up and simply sealed the clammy appendage into Itachi's cool, firm palm. Her head was spinning. She wished she'd taken Ino and Sakura's ludicrous advice of an earpiece and button camera, because she was sure she was going to need to be walked through the rest of the afternoon. As they shook, she shifted the heavy frame of her ikebana arrangement in her other arm and nearly dropped it.

"I'll take that," said Itachi. He turned the frame over and examined the piece, his dark eyes flickering over it like flames over kindling.

Hinata waited nervously for his opinion. She'd chosen her very best arrangement for the occasion. She'd even consulted Ino on its appropriateness before fetching it out of a Hyuuga family safe.

The simple teak frame contained a couple of golden Japanese maple leaves, pressed into an arrangement of irises and chrysanthemum buds, and she felt that the effect, although startling and somewhat unorthodox, had been worth it. It'd taken forever to wait for the irises to mature as she'd wanted them and then even longer to dry them enough to use. She'd lost her patience with the sugar-thin petals so many times that she'd once put the arrangement aside and come back to it after a month. But when she was finished, she had been glowing with satisfaction at her own work, at the gold spikes of the maple leaves among the softer, regal curves of the irises, and the chrysanthemum buds assisting the entire image like correct punctuation in a paragraph.

"How long did this take you to complete?" asked Itachi matter-of-factly, running a thumb over one of the irises.

"A-about eight months," she said. "It...it was really hard. I kept having to ch-change...to change the arrangement."

Itachi observed it emotionlessly, then brought his glance upward. She felt his gaze on her like a searchlight and held very still. She didn't know why. She just knew that whatever was going through his mind at the moment was very, very, important, and she had to stay still in order to see what he was going to do next. They stayed like that, the two dark-haired heirs, observing each other without emotion, while the moment stretched out endlessly around them.

And then, with the careful deliberation for which he was famous, Itachi Uchiha extended his arms, opened his fingers, and smashed her precious ikebana arrangement all over the Uchiha mansion's flawless marble floor.

**~X~**


	3. Chapter 3

Sakura, who had been modeling for Hime Workouts since she was thirteen, had once told Hinata about a gig for which she was required to wear an absurd crocheted halter top. Because of the supposed aesthetic value of being able to see her skin through the provocative netting, she hadn't bothered to wear anything underneath it. Nobody except her had been surprised when the catch snapped and the halter top burst open on the runway in front of at least two hundred people and twice that number of cameras.

Sakura was confident and beautiful, and if anything embarrassed her she was usually capable of chomping on it and spitting out the pieces. She always emerged none the worse for wear. If anyone was able to retaliate with style, it was definitely Sakura. But when she felt those flimsy threads snap, she confided to Hinata, she had found herself unable to do anything more than burst into tears.

That was how Hinata felt, observing the remains of what had, moments before, been probably the most beautiful thing she had ever created. She started to cry.

She was sure a more assertive person would have grabbed Itachi by his silky red tie and throttled him with it, or at least dashed his brains out on the floor to accompany what he had done, but she had never held any delusions of being an assertive person. And even if she had been, she simply wasn't able to do anything except stand there in shock.

Itachi hadn't so much as flinched when the arrangement exploded, in a cacophony of glass and petals that now lay strewn across the foyer floor. He was calm and observant.

"I have destroyed your ikebana arrangement."

What was anyone supposed to say to that? Hinata was horrified to find that her sobs were growing more audible.

"You turned it over to me, completely trusting that I would handle it properly, and I have destroyed it. Whether through deliberate malice or simple incompetence, you will never know, but in any case, it is destroyed. The motivation is of no consequence in the face of the result."

Itachi's eyes swept along the floor, then rose back to hers. There was no change in his expression, not so much as a blink. It was as if he didn't even notice she was crying. She could have been standing in front of him singing, or threatening him, or jumping up and down aimlessly, and his reaction would have been the same.

"You worked on that piece for eight months--is that correct?"

She nodded.

"It was very well done, and you must have worked hard to make it. A professional has every type of dried flower readily available to her and is able to complete works of similar quality in a few hours. You had no such advantage, therefore you must have dried and pressed each of those flowers manually, without assistance. It was surely difficult. You must have been very proud of the finished piece. However, I have destroyed it."

Hinata bent her head.

"I want you to think about how that makes you feel, Hinata."

Had she been someone else, she would have screamed at him that she was obviously thinking about it, and that was why she was crying in the first place!

"Think very carefully about this: you worked on that arrangement for eight months before a careless handler destroyed it."

Eight months of effort. A beautiful creation--but more than that, a sense of pride, a sense of accomplishment where there had been none before.

"Do you think you would feel the same way had it been ten months? A year? Twelve years?"

The same? Of course, probably worse! She didn't need to answer; the question was so obviously rhetorical. Itachi seemed to understand this. He continued without waiting for her reply.

"No one deserves to see their precious creation destroyed by someone who is uncaring or simply incompetent. It seems to be a hurtful experience."

Itachi stooped for a moment to take a large shard of glass from the floor. Avoiding the sharp edge, he turned it over in his hand and ran a purposeful finger down the center. The glass produced a shrieking, ringing noise as it made contact with his skin.

"The pain you are feeling right now is a particularly terrible kind of pain, and I am well aware of that," commented Itachi. Then he said something which froze the blood in Hinata's veins.

"You worked on this arrangement for eight months, Hinata. Your father has worked on his company for his entire lifetime."

He bent and swept a piece of the frame in a wide arc to clear the glass pieces from his path. Then he straightened and casually collected a few loose strands of hair back into his ponytail.

"It is my belief that your inability to perform to your father's expectations is due to a lack of comprehension about how serious the situation is," he continued. "Mr. Hyuuga genuinely believes that the company is doomed to failure once you take the helm. It is an inherited company and the papers of the trust state that it may only operate under leadership from an heir, so he cannot name another successor. His life's work, therefore, faces imminent destruction every time you demonstrate your incompetence. Every day, when he looks at you, your father sees the same shattered ikebana arrangement you see now."

He stepped on an iris and severed its head from the stem.

"I did not know if you were aware that you cause your father pain, Hinata," Itachi said, the deep timbre of his voice lending his words a gentleness that made no sense in context. "But now that you are bound by a common experience of the same pain, you will remember it.

"You and I have caused the same pain to someone. I did it intentionally, and you did not, but it is the same pain nonetheless. I hope this will encourage you to perform admirably in our work together."

He walked past her. Then, without turning around, he said, "With that, we will end here today. I will take my leave."

And that was exactly what he did.

**~X~**

Hinata was so stunned by what Itachi had just said that she didn't notice the door open and close, nor did she pay any attention to the woman who had just come in and stepped out of her shoes. But when she heard the low voice, she turned around.

"My, what happened here?"

She was a small woman, fine dark hair and delicate features, and because of this Hinata concluded that it was the Uchiha matriarch--Mikoto, Itachi and Sasuke's mother.

There were probably worse ways to greet such an important woman than standing in her foyer and crying, but Hinata was unable to think of any.

Mikoto was wearing white linen gloves, and as she evaluated the damage done to her entrance lobby, she began to remove them by loosening one finger at a time. She said nothing. When she had completed five sharp tugs and the left glove lay in her hand, she finally broke the silence.

"Itachi did this, didn't he?"

Hinata's head snapped up. "Oh--w-what?"

Mikoto shook her head and began to work at her second glove. "You must be Hinata then--you've grown into a lovely young lady, haven't you? Itachi did mention you'd be coming by today to begin your…training. I'm sorry I wasn't home sooner."

She crossed over to a side table, her tread just as measured and even as her son's, and removed the decorative cover from the tabletop. Then she handed her gloves to Hinata.

"Put these on, my dear. Ikebana, I take it? Well, we can't save the arrangement, but we might be able to salvage some of your flowers."

Mikoto clearly expected Hinata to comply. She herself knelt, covering her hands with the table cover she had taken, and began scooping petals and flower heads into the pocket created by the cloth.

She didn't seem even remotely disturbed. Aside from her momentary disorientation after entering, Mikoto had seemed completely unruffled by the disaster scene in front of her. This was not to say she didn't seem caring; she frowned at each of the broken flowers and sighed with relief whenever a complete one was retrieved, but there was no shock in her face at all. Hinata couldn't quite place the reaction. It was almost as if…as if—

"Um…excuse me, please, Mrs. Uchiha," began Hinata in a ridiculous tremolo voice. "How did you know Ita…Itachi...did this?"

Hinata had a notion that it was in very bad taste to take any mother to task on her son's apparent cruel and deranged behavior, but the situation was so beyond normalcy at this point that she felt she could be excused for any breaches of courtesy.

Mikoto paused, half a carnation in her hand. "He informed me that he would be meeting you today. I assumed he had something special planned."

"_Special_?"

"Itachi's teaching methods are a little…unconventional. Effective, certainly—but unconventional. To be honest, I was a bit surprised that your father actually asked him to help you. Itachi can be harsh."

Hinata couldn't quite believe what she was hearing. "T-Teaching methods? This was…an exercise?"

Mikoto shrugged and guided Hinata's hand gently away from a piece of glass. "Itachi isn't prone to wanton cruelty, dear. He must have told you something or pointed out some conclusion to be drawn from this…did he?"

_I did not know if you were aware that you cause your father pain_…_but now that you are bound by a common experience of the same pain, you will remember it._

Hinata bit her lip. Mikoto was right. He had used the ikebana arrangement to tell her something.

She hadn't ever really conceptualized the notion of causing her father pain before.

To Hinata, Byakugan Multinational had always been a company—nothing more and nothing less. And a company was like any other heirloom, to be maintained by a particular family as an extension of that family's prestige and habit. The notion that had been formed in her mind over a period of years was that the Hyuuga family were the caretakers of this particular object—or perhaps _guards_ was a better term, like guards in a museum who maintain an artifact from an impersonal distance. There was no relationship between the guard and the object, merely the understanding of a job that had to be done.

Hinata had always thought the analogy fit her father. He was a competent heir and kept a rigorous schedule for the company, every function and meeting planned out to the letter and penciled onto a gigantic calendar on one wall of his study. Hiashi completed his duties with such mechanical regularity that Hinata had never assigned any feelings to the operation at all. Her father and all the other Hyuugas like him were guards. Just guards. The company was their object.

Nothing more. Nothing less.

But with the shattering of glass, Itachi had made her see that perhaps the company had been something more to her father than a simple job. Maybe for her father, the color-coded boxes on his schedule and the devotion with which he attended to them had been like her ikebana books, full of sketches of irises from every possible angle. Maybe Byakugan Multinational was his work of art, and she had simply never noticed.

Maybe she was poised to destroy that work of art—not through malice, as Itachi had apparently done, but through sheer incompetence.

Hinata wasn't a stranger to the feeling of a blush on her cheeks. For someone who managed to do something embarrassing several times a day, it was a routine sensation. This time, however, the feeling made her distinctly uncomfortable. She understood in a dim corner of her mind that it wasn't embarrassment, but shame.

"I don't deny that this is ridiculous, even for Itachi," Mikoto was saying hurriedly, apparently having misinterpreted Hinata's silence. "It's just that he tends to place efficiency before kindness or even general common sense. He broke Sasuke's wrist once, did you know?"

"H-he did _what_?" Ikebana arrangement, wrist—there was really no comparison.

"I was furious!" Mikoto giggled. Hinata wondered if everyone in the Uchiha family was just a tiny bit sociopathic. "Sasuke had a bad habit of getting into fights in elementary school, and most of those were fights with older children he couldn't even hope to hold his own against. There was this incident with a high school student, Zabuza…" She sighed. "Well, anyway, Itachi got tired of seeing his brother come home every day with such preventable injuries, and he goaded Sasuke into charging at him."

"…What happened?"

"Well, Itachi just reached down and snapped Sasuke's wrist. A very clean break, like he meant to do it—which of course he did, as we understood later."

Hinata didn't know what was more disturbing, the fact that this had happened, or that Mikoto seemed to find this an entirely normal sibling relationship. "Was…was Sasuke mad?"

Mikoto laughed. "You've met Sasuke, haven't you, dear? That day he was more upset by what he perceived as humiliation than injury—Itachi had purposefully done it in front of his friend, Naruto, and one of Itachi's own friends—Kisame, I think?

She had a smile on her face as she took in Hinata's disturbed expression. "I can see you're troubled, dear. But what Itachi did _was_ effective, although as his mother I certainly made sure he didn't go unpunished at the time. Sasuke's still a little too impulsive for his own good, but he at least pauses before rushing into situations in which he's outclassed. And that pause has, on many occasions, made all the difference between a good decision and a very bad one."

She folded up the cloth she was still holding, which was now full of flowers. Without breaking her motions, she tied the ends into a smooth knot and handed the entire bundle over to Hinata.

"I'm grateful to Itachi, Hinata—as is Sasuke, although I doubt he'll ever say as much. And I have no doubt that, in time, you'll come to be as well."

Hinata took the bundle.

"I hope so, Mrs. Uchiha…"

"Good! But still, between you and me, I hope you can redo that arrangement, and bring it by sometime to show me. Maybe when my son isn't around."

Hinata couldn't help but laugh. It was a little weak, but it was still a laugh. Mikoto's surreal treatment of a surreal situation had been exactly what she needed, for the time being at least.

As she left the mansion, chauffeured by one of the Uchiha family's drivers, she found herself strangely grateful. Sadistic and deranged, apparently--but at least he hadn't broken her wrist.

**~X~**

When Hinata got home, Hanabi was sitting on the front steps and painting her nails.

"Hey," she said, not looking up between strokes. "How was the date?"

"If that was a date, it was the worst date in the history of dates," said Hinata flatly.

She was glad she had gotten her crying out of the way.

Sisters were sisters, at the end of the day, the only people you could speak to without stuttering or say anything you wanted without exercising common sense first. If anyone could listen to her story and provide exactly the desired reaction, it had to be Hanabi. Sakura would probably maim anything that looked remotely Uchiha; Ino would extrapolate some sort of bizarre sexual tension from the entire scenario; but Hanabi could be counted on to stay completely calm and do nothing but blow on her fingernails, which was exactly what she did after hearing Hinata's account.

"Damn," was her only comment. "Tough love, and all that. Hot."

Hinata decided that otherwise reliable females completely lost their heads to hormones when confronted with Itachi Uchiha, but belaboring the point would probably result in a bottle of nail polish flung at her head. She stood up to leave and maybe pick through Mikoto's bundle of flower heads when Hanabi interrupted her. "If you're going in, want to grab the emerald bracelet out of the safe for me?"

"Emerald—why?"

"Maybe you didn't have a date today, but some of us do," said Hanabi smugly. "You remember that guy I told you about—Konohamaru?"

"I thought you said he was…dorky…"

"What does that have to do with you getting my emerald bracelet for me so I can go on his stupid study date and intimidate him once and for all so he'll stop bothering me about going out with him every day during second period? That bracelet just screams 'out of your league.' I want it. Go."

It disturbed Hinata how neatly the last two lines encapsulated her relationship with her sister. She made a last effort to be vaguely assertive. "Can't you go?"

"_Hello?_" Hanabi waved her fingertips at her sister. "Drying!"

The room with the safe in it was quite dark, but still lit well enough to see the numbers on the computerized pad next to the metal door. Hinata still thought her eyes were deceiving her when she gained access to the safe, opened the door, and saw the neat white envelope propped up on a pile of jewelry boxes. Then she saw what was on the envelope and actually squeaked.

It was a wax seal, stamped with an Uchiha crest.

The note inside was as precise and formal as its writer's speech.

_Dear Hinata,_

_I assume that you are a talented ikebana artist, but, like many amateurs, not talented enough to discern your own work from a fake._

_Regards,  
Itachi Uchiha_

Hinata flipped over the note and stared at the back, heart racing, but there was nothing there except the beveled grain of whatever expensive notepaper Itachi had used. And then, as she was analyzing the envelope the note had come in, she saw the flat, brown-wrapped package. It had been placed behind the jewelry boxes, where a groping hand or eye wouldn't immediately find it.

She snatched the package and tore the paper off, aware and uncaring that she was making small whimpering noises.

Her ikebana arrangement was just as she remembered it. Only this time, there was the scratch in the back of the frame that she hadn't bothered to check for when she was rushing out the door with it earlier: _Hinata Hyuuga, 2008_.

He'd replaced it. He'd tricked her with a replacement, and just as he had anticipated, she hadn't noticed at all.

Another piece of ostentatious notepaper dislodged itself from the back of the frame and floated gently to the floor. Hinata had to forcefully remind herself not to throw the frame aside as she leaped for the paper; it would have been utterly senseless to repeat the accident for the second time that day—she kept telling herself that, but the blood pounding in her ears completely drowned out the sensible internal warning.  
_  
Dear Hinata,_

_Enclosed you will find your original ikebana arrangement. You may have realized that what you saw (or will see, which applies at the time I am writing this) destroyed was in fact a fake. Many apologies for the deception. Professional ikebana artists have many varieties of flowers available for their use, so one of my associates was able to duplicate your prized arrangement in a matter of hours._

_It was necessary to deceive you in order to make my point, and as the deception will have been carried out by the time you receive this message, I hope the point has been made._

_In case it has not, I will state it again: Your company is as precious to your father as this ikebana arrangement is to you, and every time you are unable to motivate yourself to become a better heiress, remember that you are causing him the same pain you felt today. I feel that this is the best motivation I can provide._

_To business, then: I will be giving you a series of assignments to complete so that together we may develop your capability to lead Byakugan Multinational. We have a mere six months, so I expect you to give them full priority as you would your studies or personal matters. The first of these assignments is straightforward:_

_By the end of today, I will have broken what you perceived as your most precious work of art. You may hate me. You may despise me. Your assignment is simple: use those feelings of hatred and rage, and exact revenge upon me._

_When you are able to do this, contact me. If you have not done so by the end of next week, I will inform your father that I am unable to continue your training._

_Regards,  
Itachi Uchiha_

_Incidentally: Your arrangement is beautiful._

Her heart was hammering. She gasped out loud when she realized it wasn't because of the impossible task she'd been set, but the last sentence he had written.

**~X~**

Hanabi Hyuuga was smiling, although she figured Hinata had probably forgotten all about her emerald bracelet. This was expected, as she didn't really need the emerald bracelet in the first place. She intimidated Konohamaru on a daily basis! Didn't Hinata realize that she could certainly do it without props?

The nails on her left hand glittered, and she smiled at them admiringly as she waved them in the air. The color was really flawless; an intense blue-black violet like the surface of an extraordinarily deep lake. She'd been itching to try it out since Sasuke had handed it to her, as he was waiting in the car for her sister. The label on the bottle said _Amaterasu_.

Around the bottle was a little gift tag on gold ribbon. It said:

_Dear Ms. Hanabi Hyuuga,_

_I was pleased to hear that you managed to replace Hinata's arrangement with the fake and my note, as we discussed yesterday. Please accept this token of thanks._

_Regards,  
Itachi Uchiha_

**~X~**

An alarm on Itachi's desk went off, and he turned around.

A small light was blinking on an electronic console. The device functioned like a walkie-talkie, registering remotely triggered signals on the same wavelength in order to convey messages. In this case, the message was that the package he had sent to the Hyuuga mansion, with the corresponding sensor planted in it, had been opened.

It wasn't as if he would betray it by an outward sign, but he'd been uneasy since the frame of Hinata's arrangement had left his hands. He'd known what would happen--he always did--but he'd still had to steel himself against the bare fact of her shocked face. Now he let himself smile.

_Let the games begin_.

**~X~**


	4. Chapter 4

Konoha School was always flooded with sunlight. Visitors to the school's campus usually forgot the concrete details of the landscaping over time, but they always remembered the sunlight, endless blinding amounts of it, inundating the buildings and trees with a golden wash which, as the day wore on, matured to an almost liquid coating. Seen from afar the school seemed otherworldly and almost anachronistic. It was its own hidden village, sequestered in a canopy of gilded tree leaves.

The students never noticed such things. They had more pressing matters to attend to.

By the age of twelve, a Konoha student would graduate from the affiliated primary school that was affectionately known as "The Academy." By the fourteen, she would choose the business specialization she would pursue and excel in for the rest of her life, guided on that path by Konoha's extensive network of career counselors. By sixteen, she would attain the rank of a competent businesswoman. And by her graduation at eighteen, she would graduate from Konoha itself, and take her place among the finest businesspeople in the world.

"The business world is war! I hear that all the time," Tsunade Senju, Konoha's headmistress, had famously barked in an interview. "A businessman has to be smart, stealthy, and have fast reflexes! But here at Konoha, we teach our students to have a social conscience too. We try to give them a sense of business as peace, not war. That's what we call our 'Will of Fire' philosophy, and we make damn sure our students follow it!"

"A businessman has to take his whole company along to the top," said Kakashi Hatake, the school's premier career counselor. "No one looks underneath the underneath anymore. The old philosophy—certain people getting ahead while the others fall behind—that's not going to work in this new age. A company is a team, and those who leave their teammates behind are worse than trash."

Asuma Sarutobi, a personal trainer affiliated with the school, put things more bluntly: "We're not businessmen. We're fucking ninjas."

But no one really quoted that one. Except for students.

They were an interesting group. Most of them had been enrolled at Konoha before their birth by virtue of their old-money old-blood old-fashioned families, but there were also several who had been culled from other schools by virtue of Konoha's special scholarship test. This was informally known as the Bell Test. It required teams of students to sell two small, virtually useless silver bells to a Konoha faculty member, by any means possible, and emerge with a profit of two hundred percent or more.

It stood to reason that at the end of the day, Konoha School's students were among the finest young business minds in the country. They were widely accepted as having brains, either their own or those conferred by a certain genetic pedigree. Since there were only about seven business high schools in the world, Konoha students were usually snapped up for internships and college scholarships the moment they received their leaf-embossed diplomas.

The distinction, along with the inconceivable amount of pressure, came with a grueling school schedule that involved classes as well as MBA-style team simulations, known as "missions" to the student body. The missions were a vital part of a student's career at Konoha, and as Tsunade and old Hiruzen before her had been obsessed with the concept of business-as-teamwork, the students were divided into groups to complete their tasks. From eight to ten every morning, the three-man teams would congregate in the large sunny atrium known as the Mountain to discuss their missions and carry out whatever action items they had agreed on before.

The Mountain was shaped like a smaller, glass-encased version of Sydney Opera House, and drew its name from the jagged peak its ceiling made when viewed against the rest of Konoha's campus. Inside, five gigantic portraits of Konoha's old headmasters, done in monochrome to match the glass-and-steel architecture, presided over the expansive space. There were also smaller portraits of notable Konoha alumni, including Madara Uchiha, who had established the entire present-day structure of Sharingan Enterprises, and Jiraiya Gama, who had built up a formidable publishing house before turning to more questionable endeavors. Beneath the faces of these giants were rows and rows of triangular Plexiglass tables, around which students sat with laptop computers and discussed their missions.

Or they were supposed to be discussing their missions, at least. Hinata had just finished recounting something quite different to her two teammates.

"Son of a bitch!" was Kiba's assessment after hearing about what had happened to her.

Hinata hadn't actually meant to tell him about her experiences with Itachi Uchiha, but half a week had gone by and she was no closer to earning her revenge than she had been on the day of the incident itself. She'd decided there was probably no harm in asking her two teammates for help. They were both trustworthy and reliable.

"Is this the part where we cut off his balls?" Kiba wanted to know.

Trustworthy and reliable, but not necessarily sensible.

"N-no!" cried Hinata. "He said revenge, but I don't know what to do…I've never really gotten r-revenge on anyone before…"

"Why? Because you have never wanted to," said Shino whimsically. He was barely paying attention to her, seemingly fixated in moving windows around on his tablet PC. All three of them had their computers out, open to the PDF file of their latest mission, but Shino was the only one actually doing anything.

"Exactly," said Kiba, "and she doesn't know how it's done, either! So cutting off his—"

"We cannot do that," said Shino. "Why? Because Itachi Uchiha…" He paused for a moment, looking sternly at Kiba over the tops of his sunglasses. "Because Itachi Uchiha will never give us an opportunity to sever his testicles."

Hinata hid her face in her hands. Whenever she talked to her teammates, her biggest fear was always that someone would overhear their conversation, and she wouldn't be able to justify anything that was said because she never had any idea what they were talking about.

"I don't want to do that!" she whispered furiously.

"Good," said Shino. "It is not a viable idea."

"But he wants _revenge_, right?" said Kiba. "I mean, something that, like, POW, hits him in the face, right? So aside from that, we could like, key his car, or—

Hinata was scandalized. "Kiba! He didn't actually _destroy _my ikebana! He just made me_ think _he had! I can't destroy something of his!"

"Why not? You're out for blood!" yelled Kiba, waving his arms in the air. Ino's team, working at an adjacent table, cast him annoyed looks and shifted their chairs a little further away.

Kiba's family had never been affiliated with business. Most of the Inuzukas were veterinarians, but he himself had no interest in medicine. At the age of fifteen, he had taken the Bell Test and been accepted to Konoha for the business of veterinary administration. Shino, like Hinata, came from an old business family, Kikai Electronics. The corporation was small and contained and nowhere near as prestigious as Byakugan Multinational, but the Aburames took their 'bugs' seriously and had enrolled Shino for Konoha at birth, as most business families did. Like the rest of the Aburame family, he was an expert technician and a little strange, prone to random fits of navel-gazing and occasionally, wiping people's hard drives with some rare breed of virus he had just developed.

Hinata liked them. She couldn't imagine her life without them. But it didn't change the fact that they weren't helping her present situation at all.

"I don't want to do something cruel," she tried again.

"What he did to you was cruel," Shino pointed out. "It was disproportionate. Because that arrangement took you eight months. Eight months is very long. You were devastated." He stated all these things simply and oddly as he always did.

"He was trying to prove a point…"

"Yeah, that we should all feel bad for your _dad? _Not like that makes any sense at all!" cut in Kiba. "Guy's a fucking loon—"

"But it _does_ make sense—" faltered Hinata.

"Hinata. Seriously. Don't try to defend him. Your dad's the last person anyone in his damn mind would feel bad for, and especially when he spends half his time chewing your head off for stuff that isn't your fault. I actually have this theory that he has no soul, like some, like, _vampire_, or something, and it makes sense that Itachi Uchiha would get behind him because it's not like he—"

"It _doesn't matter_!"

Kiba stopped mid-rant and stared at her. The clicking noises coming from Shino's computer ceased entirely.

"What'd you just say?"

"I said it doesn't m-matter!" cried Hinata. "All I ever hear from you—_all_ of you, you and Sakura and Ino and everyone—is how nothing is my f-fault! But that doesn't matter, because even if n-none of the stuff that h-happens is my fault…it s-still happens! And it's still painful to m-my dad and to _me_, Kiba, but you never notice because you t-treat me like a _child_!"

Her teammates' faces went blank, and she clapped her hands over her mouth.

Kiba, mouth open, leaned back in his chair. Finding nothing to do with his hands, he hooked them behind his head and worked them uselessly into his hair. He made some extraneous movements with his feet. Hinata could tell he had absolutely no idea what to say.

Shino adjusted his glasses.

"Well," he said superfluously. This was the most singularly awkward thing Shino ever allowed himself to say on a regular basis, but he usually only brought it out for special occasions. Like this one.

"I'm sorry," whispered Hinata.

Kiba rubbed his head furiously. "I mean, _damn, _Hinata, who'd have—"

"I'm sorry for s-snapping at you, Kiba," she continued determinedly. "But I'm not sorry for what I s-said. Itachi made me r-realize something. I'm g-glad he did."

A faint flush colored the Inuzuka's face. "It's fine, Hinata. I guess I'm…glad he did too, if you're glad…I mean…if that's how you really feel…"

He trailed off into nothingness and the three teammates stared at each other uncomfortably, the way they had their sophomore year when Hinata had voted for Naruto over Kiba in a class-wide simulated election. After a few moments of this, Shino resumed the clicking of his keys. This was a sign that he too had forgiven Hinata in some capacity, and Hinata allowed herself to exhale.

"I still want your help," she said nervously. "If you're w-willing…to g-give it…"

"What the hell, Hinata?" blurted Kiba. "Don't act so freaking _weird_! Whatever you decide to do, we're behind you all the way, okay? And if you want to chew our heads off sometimes, that's okay too…right, Shino?"

"You have my permission for occasional cranial mastication as well, Hinata," said Shino gravely. "Why? Because we are what is known as teammates."

"She can chew your head off if you ever drag it out of your ass, Shino! Now could we see that note again, Hinata?"

"…Y-yes, Kiba, of course…"

Hinata produced Itachi's last note, and, placing it in the center of the triangular table, read over it again with her teammates.

_Use your hatred and rage, and exact revenge upon me_.

"We need to be looking at this more closely," said Shino. "Because Itachi Uchiha always says exactly what he means."

"Revenge is revenge, Shino! It's not like there's any weird hidden meaning or anything!"

"Do you know the meaning of the word," inquired Shino seriously.

Kiba went beserk. "What the _fuck?! _Of course I do!" he screamed. "You prick! You bastard son of a pricky bitch! REVENGE! To exact punishment or expi…_expiation_ for a wrong on behalf of oneself, usually in a resentful or vindictive spirit! EAT IT!"

As they usually did, they ignored the fact that the desktop dictionary icon on his computer was blinking.

"It is not just punishment," said Shino. "It must be carried out in exactly equal measure to whatever crime was committed."

"So it doesn't mean anything until it's like, _proportional_—" Kiba looked proud— "to what he did to you! That's why you have to do something badass, Hinata!"

"Kiba is correct. It is even stated in the language—_exact _revenge," said Shino. Kiba grew so puffed up at the rare compliment that if he had had a tail, Hinata suspected it would have been wagging.

"Damn straight! You hit him where it HURTS!"

"But how?" wondered Hinata. She massaged her temples fitfully.

She'd thought of everything. Damaging his house, his car, his smile (she was sure she could convince Kiba to punch out one of those gleaming Uchiha molars) but after every vindictively conceived notion, her halfhearted enmity either fizzled out or she realized the idea would never work.

Because Itachi hadn't built up any of those things the way she'd designed that ikebana arrangement. He didn't derive as much satisfaction out of any of those things, and so it was unlikely he would feel so much pain either.

She let her eyes wander over the Mountain room. It was a beautiful atrium, spacious and filled with Konoha student teams, and she could see most of her classmates from her vantage point.

_Equal measure to the crime committed_…

Ino's team had apparently just finished a mission. They were laughing as they clinked bottles of VitaminWater together over their laptop screens. Chouji Akimichi produced a bag of chips from seemingly nowhere and offered handfuls to his teammates.

_You may hate me. You may despise me…_

Hinata's cousin Neji and his team had just come in. He cast her a glare—they'd never gotten along well, thanks to internal Hyuuga family affairs—and motioned to his female teammate. She smiled at him and their group took a table at the other end of the atrium, far away from Hinata, Kiba, and Shino.

_Itachi's teaching methods have always been a little unorthodox…_

In the sunniest part of the room, Sakura had just dumped a bottle of Evian over Naruto's blond head. Hinata could hear the wails all the way from her table. Naruto said something to Sakura and she laughed in spite of herself, as did their third teammate, Sasuke—

_Sasuke._

And suddenly, Hinata froze.

She knew how to hit Itachi Uchiha where it hurt.

"Hinata? Where're you going?" asked Kiba as she stood up. She barely heard him as she walked away, through the maze of tables, under the giant portrait of Hiruzen Sarutobi, into the sunlight and across from Sakura's table.

Sakura looked up. "Hey, Hinata!" she offered brightly. "You want to sit? That seat's all wet, I wouldn't—"

"Sasuke," said Hinata, so stunned by her idea that she didn't even notice her lack of a stutter, "Can I talk to you for a moment?"

**~X~**

"Naruto doesn't get it yet, so I'm explaining it to him after school. It's an important mission. But we can still go if you pick me up right afterwards."

"And your car, Sasuke?"

"We can come back and get it later. You know the store closes early, and I have to pick up that tie."

If it were even vaguely characteristic of him to waste any of his precious movements, Itachi would have rolled his eyes. He settled for sighing instead.

"At what time?"

"Five. I'll be at the Mountain—you can just drive up, you don't have to park. See you then."

So at four-fifty exactly Itachi pulled out of traffic and turned on his blinker for the Konoha School exit. It was a fairly crisp fall afternoon, so he had taken a coat for Sasuke as well on the way out, in case his brother had forgotten one. He put a plain white dress shirt in the back of the car as well, to make sure that the tie Sasuke was buying was an appropriate match.

Sasuke never thought of these things for himself. He scoffed at Naruto for being oblivious, but it wasn't really as if he was any better.

He pulled up to the Mountain at four-fifty-seven, unsurprised that he was early—unsurprised at anything, really. The Mountain was the same as it had always looked. Through the giant panes of glass that served as windows, he could see that they had added a picture of Tsunade, the newest headmistress, whose term had begun after he had left the school. He could even see his own portrait, hanging on the alumni wall next to Shisui Uchiha's.

Itachi had graduated from Konoha at eighteen and become acting vice-president of Sharingan a year later, but every time he came back to the School, he felt that he was still a student, walking into the atrium with his computer to complete some standard mission, always with the sunlight in his eyes.

Sometimes it seemed that he had never left.

He looked around. Sasuke didn't seem to be out yet, so he let the car idle in front of the Mountain. It seemed oddly empty, and oddly quiet—except for the omnipresent rustle of leaves, it was actually quieter than he had ever seen it. Those rustling, snapping, sounds…

He stopped. Those weren't leaves.

Itachi put the car in park and stepped out. The sounds, whatever they were, grew louder, and as he skirted the side of the building and proceeded towards the courtyard in back, Itachi could hear shouts. The Mountain was huge, however, and by the time he finally got there, the shouts had resolved themselves into cheers and the snapping sounds into cracks as two people rolled around on the dry fall twigs.

Itachi was about to grab the one closest to him when he saw who the other was and his throat momentarily closed up—but only momentarily—

Sasuke barely had time to look up before Itachi's hand was on his throat and he was slammed against the wall, his vocal cords constricted by his shirt collar.

"Sasuke."

Sasuke smirked. He was bleeding slightly from the side of his mouth. "Hey, Itach—"

Itachi forced him further up the wall. Strangely, he felt as if he was the one having trouble breathing, as if he were the one whose throat had been pinched closed. He felt as if he were the one caught in the fight. It was unheard of. He hadn't felt that way since Sasuke was in elementary school, and that bastard Zabuza and his stupid sidekick had—

"What were you doing, Sasuke?"

His voice didn't break or even rise in volume. If anyone had heard the tone and not the words, they wouldn't have been able to guess what he was saying. But Sasuke knew, and his smirk widened a little.

"Let him up, Itachi!" said someone, and Itachi realized he had completely forgotten about the other participant in the fight. He moved his eyes to the side, not releasing Sasuke.

"Naruto," he said, still in that same toneless voice. "It's nice to see you again. Please excuse my brother's behavior." He lifted Sasuke slightly by his shirt and bashed him back against the wall, moving nothing but his wrist. No one noticed that his fingers were clenched so hard the tendons were white, and his knuckles entirely bloodless. All the rage that was absent from his voice was present in the few ligaments between his wrist and his fingertips.

Sasuke saw it.

"Sasuke," said Itachi, in a very low voice. "Haven't we had this discussion…about fighting…?"

At the pause, Itachi curled his fingers around Sasuke's left wrist, which had healed entirely. They left a red mark.

Sasuke looked at his brother and said, "So?"

And then he laughed in Itachi's face.

Itachi remembered breaking Sasuke's wrist; he'd waited in the hospital for the entire five days, his unblinking eyes on Sasuke's hospital bed; he'd memorized all the anaesthetics they'd given his little brother and the placement of every smiley face and scribble the nurses had drawn on the cast; his erector set, the one Sasuke always wanted to play with but was never allowed to touch, had mysteriously found its way into Sasuke's room that night, and Itachi had helped him screw in the bolts, since he only had one hand to do it with, and…

Itachi let go of Sasuke's collar.

His eyes went everywhere except his little brother's face, where he found himself unable to look. The little thin line of blood was like a red pen mark on a test. And he had never gotten a red mark on a test; he was unclear where he would have even seen one—

His phone vibrated in his pocket. He ignored it.

"Answer your phone, Itachi," said Sasuke from the floor, mockingly. "Come on, I'm not stopping you—"

So he put his hand into his pocket and checked the screen, which said simply:

"_No one deserves to see their precious creation destroyed. It seems to be a hurtful experience."_

When he looked up, he suddenly noticed the Hyuuga girl standing at the edge of the gathered students, her phone in her hand, and her smile like an inherent part of the sunlight that spilled everywhere.

Itachi did not cry out. He did not scream, or laugh, or swear. But he did blink. And that, in retrospect, was quite something.

Hinata Hyuuga, with the aid of his own foolish little brother, had gotten her revenge.

**~X~**


	5. Chapter 5

**~X~**

_To: Hinata Hyuuga  
From: Itachi Uchiha_

_Seven o'clock tomorrow evening, Argent. I will pick you up._

_Congratulations. 1st assignment complete._

**~X~**

Hanabi Hyuuga was sitting on the steps again, doing homework.

She wasn't actually doing homework, of course, just gnawing on the end of her pencil and waiting for the driver of the silver Maserati to step out and look at her, which he did. He even bowed slightly. Hanabi had to admire _the enemy's _manners.

And his car. She had to admire that, too.

That didn't stop her from standing up and glowering at him--or as she would have called it, fixing him with an elegant and inquisitive look. She broke away for a second to glance at the phone in her hand, then turned the look right back on him. Who did he think he was? Did he really think he could ruin Hinata's ikebana, make some kind of _lesson _out of her feelings, and expect her to run right back to him when he was done? And Hinata obviously wasn't going to do anything about it, so Hanabi had activated her somewhat misguided sense of duty and decided it was time for her to wreak havoc on Itachi Uchiha's arrogant _ass._

"I see you're taking my sister out today?"

"Hello, Ms. Hyuuga. I hope my present of thanks was to your liking."

Hanabi curled her hands into fists, hiding her painted nails. You couldn't confront _the enemy _on equal grounds when you were wearing his nail polish.

_The enemy _smiled briefly. Hanabi was annoyed; usually the smiles of beautiful men were tinged with amusement, as if they were enjoying some kind of victory over you, but Itachi Uchiha's--damnit, _the enemy's--_smile was too gentle for that. He wielded it like a benediction, as if he apparently didn't care whether he was victorious or not, because he was so flawless that the concept of victory really meant nothing to him at all. Hanabi could practically hear an angel choir caroling arias at the sight of that smile. She looked back at the phone, which, to its credit, did not quite sizzle under her glare.

"Fondue," she said. "How predictable."

"I'm grateful for your assessment," said _the enemy _politely. "That might concern me if this were, in fact, a date, which it is not. However, you are correct that it would be rather crass to take a lady out for fondue on the first date, which is why it is even more fortunate that this is not, as I have already mentioned, a date--first or otherwise."

Hanabi's eyes narrowed. She was very thorough when she was scoping someone out, and she'd watched enough YouTube clips of _the enemy's _banquet appearances to tell that he was making fun of her.

"You're taking her out to _dinner._"

"I had an afternoon appointment for today, so I asked your sister if she would prefer a dinner appointment instead for our second meeting. I assume she is in the habit of having dinner, so it was convenient."

"You're going to _Argent_. You can't just call them the day before and get a reservation."

"You are truly a remarkable young woman, Ms. Hyuuga. I shall phone the restaurant immediately and demand that they cancel our reservations, as they obviously cannot exist in the first place according to your marvelous deductive talents."

Hanabi almost shrieked, but contented herself with flicking the phone open and closed in her hand.

"Asking someone to go somewhere by text is tacky, you know."

"Assuredly."

"You should've worn a tie."

"Undoubtedly."

"You could've at least stopped by a florist's."

"Indubitably."

"You're lucky I didn't see _this_--" she hissed, waving the phone in the air--"beforehand, or Hinata would've never agreed to this--"

"It is most fortunate that she did, then," said _the enemy_, without breaking his composure. "If she hadn't, I might have been forced to take _you_."

"Hanabi? Hanabi, do you know where my…"

Hinata's voice died at the sight of her sister and Itachi Uchiha, glares locked together. The tension was so thick she could bounce on it if she jumped straight up.

Hanabi noticed this and retracted her glare like an instrument, folding it up and putting it away before tossing the phone to Hinata.

"Here it is, Hina. Have a good time."

Hinata seemed so nervous she didn't even ask why Hanabi had had the phone in the first place. Her long hair had been conditioned to almost blinding heights of shininess; her purse was the right size--not large enough to seem frumpy, not small enough to seem frivolous; the outfit Hanabi had picked out looked sensational, and everything was just as planned. But Hanabi didn't know how Hinata was going to one-up _the enemy _if she didn't--

"_Smile!" _she hissed as she went past Hinata, back into the house. Hinata squeaked, then forced her mouth into a quavering approximation of a parabola.

"Goodbye, Ms. Hyuuga," floated _the enemy's _voice behind her. "Have a pleasant evening."

"You too," Hanabi ground out. She waited for the requisite nervous chatter, which receded with the opening and closing _clunks _of the car door, and when she heard the wheels scrape away down the smooth gravel she flipped open her own phone. She opened the contact list and scrolled down to a number she rarely used, in fact, only when she _really _needed a high-profile date in public to attend some society dinner or another.

They had an unspoken agreement that this arrangement was only to be used in times of emergency, but Hanabi was pretty sure this counted as an emergency. After all, Hinata had never been on a date in her _life_. She would probably faint or something. Into the fondue pot. And that stuff was freaking _hot. _What if her face burned off? What kind of message would that send _to the enemy_?It was entirely plausible. Who cared what he said about it not being a date?

She kept telling herself this through one ring, then two rings, then the telltale click.

"Uchiha. It's Hanabi. You like fondue?"

**~X~**

"I l-like fondue."

After she answered his question, there was dead silence.

Hinata wanted to die. She actually sincerely, deeply wanted to die. Itachi Uchiha was the most singularly awkward person she had ever met.

She had been around lots of awkward people. But the situation was usually made better by the fact that the awkward people recognized that they were being awkward and acted awkwardly, which in turn led someone to make a comment about how awkward the situation had become, which led people to laugh awkwardly and either proceed to new heights of awkwardness or make some concerted awkward effort to dispel the awkwardness.

She didn't even notice how many times she was using the word "awkward" in her mind. Considering how fixated she was on it, it was totally justified.

Itachi Uchiha was more awkward than any other awkward person because he didn't actually seem to _notice _theawkwardness. It just slipped off his skin. He didn't laugh. He didn't stutter. He didn't make stupid jokes. He didn't even blink, although she could have sworn she saw him flutter his eyelashes at one point. Why he or anyone would need to do this was beyond her. She really didn't want to think about it. She really didn't want to be there at all. She really didn't want to speak, but she supposed she should. Any words she could summon up would need to have the force of a judo chop to break through the sheet of awkwardness that hung in the car like a wall, a glass wall dividing the Hyuuga and Uchiha heirs as neatly as a crease in paper.

Except, what did one say to someone like Itachi Uchiha? He was a stranger.

_Well, that wasn't strictly true,_ Hinata told herself as they stopped at a red light and Itachi took his hands off the wheel to adjust his rearview mirror, not tweaking it as any normal person would have done, just making one sharp movement until it was exactly where it needed to be. He wasn't really a stranger. He'd destroyed her favorite creation, changed her entire outlook on her father and her company, and enticed her to exact revenge on someone for the first time in her life. Not much of a stranger.

She wondered if she was a stranger to him.

She was saved from following this potentially dangerous line of thought when they pulled up to the restaurant and Itachi opened the door for her. He gave the valet his keys--Hinata saw a strange keychain, a sort of pinwheel in a circle--and the silver Maserati pulled away from the curb.

"W-what was that?"

"What was…?"

"Your k-keychain." She was surprised at herself. Stupid, stupid, stupid! What if it was personal? A present from a girlfriend? A parent? _Fugaku Uchiha himself_? Hinata wanted to turn around and run screaming into the alleyway behind the restaurant.

Itachi blinked. "A Sharingan Enterprises symbol. Surely you've seen one before?"

"Y-yes…But that wasn't one. It was d-different."

Itachi smiled. Hinata was genuinely floored by that smile. There was no arrogance in it, no amusement or condescension, simply a vast, quiet joy. It was just _happy_. She hadn't seen a smile like that since--

She stopped. She couldn't compare Itachi to _Naruto, _of all people! That was sacrilege!

Itachi misinterpreted her reddening cheeks. "It's all right. Most do not notice, that's all. It was a gift from my great-uncle, Madara. "

He said nothing more. He answered the question and did not elaborate. Hinata was surprised at the precision; it was like a child crayoning exactly inside the lines in a coloring book. No one spoke like that. It was ridiculous. But Itachi didn't seem bothered, nor did he seem to care about the long silences that filled up between them, like fog on the glass Wall of Awkwardness; he just let them settle and carried on with his smooth, correct movements.

Open the door. Show her to her seat. Courteously mention the excellent _fondue jurassienne_, the _crem doria_, and the vegetarian dinner _crepe_. It was then that Hinata noticed something else about the Uchiha heir.

"Y-you're not looking at the m-menu…Do you c-come here a lot?"

_Initiating conversation_! She really was acting abnormal! But there was something about Itachi's silence that made her want to..._say_ things. To hear his reactions. They were given out so rarely--no, not given, _earned. _And she felt a little rise of excitement every time he handed her one, as if she had received a prize of some sort. She'd never really received any prizes...

_Incidentally, your ikebana arrangement is beautiful_.__

Congratulations. 1st assignment completed.

_Most do not notice, that's all._

Itachi shook his head. "I've come once. It isn't a very conducive atmosphere for business transactions."

This was completely true. Hinata could only think of one word to describe Argent, and that was _liquid_; the smooth, golden candlelight, the poured silver motif on the walls, the low ripples of conversation from diners, the tendrils of steam from the fondue pots--

"You r-remember the menu really w-well…"

"Mr. Uchiha! How wonderful to see you!"

The waitress was pretty and smartly dressed. Itachi said, "Thank you, Camille. It's a pleasure to be here."

The girl flushed purple, obviously flustered. "You remembered my name! I didn't think--well, you were here years ago, I--"

"Indeed, Camille."

"Well, it's--it's nice to be able to serve you again, Mr. Uchiha! And your companion, of course--"

"This is Hinata Hyuuga," Itachi introduced. "Heiress to Byakugan Multinational. I'm sure you've heard of her."

The waitress' eyes widened. There were probably alarm bells going off in her head at how prominent the couple was, how interesting it was that after years of apparently ignoring one another they wer ehaving dinner together, and how wonderful the story would undoubtedly look in any number of gossip columns, in that exact order.

"I--I--_yes_, of course! You're very welcome here, Ms. Hyuuga! Oh my _God_, I--I…I've got to bring you the wine list! The wine list, that's right! I'll be--"

"That's all right, Camille. I myself do not drink, and my guest is, unfortunately, underage."

"Oh…of course, Mr. Uchiha! I'll just--"

"We will both have the _crem doria _to start. I particularly enjoyed the herb garnish the chef had done for Sasuke last time, and I am sure Ms. Hyuuga would love to try it."

"I--sure…" said Hinata, not really caring, just wanting the wide-eyed waitress to go away.

"Right away, sir! I'll bring you a dinner menu in the meanwhile! Oh, this is just--well, enjoy, anyway! Ms. Hyuuga, you too!" She bustled off, clearly stunned and very eager to please.

Itachi, completely unruffled, pushed the bread basket towards Hinata.

"I apologize," he said. "I was rather rude to her, but I hoped to begin our meal as soon as possible. I never received a chance to congratulate you in person on your…revenge." The words had their own smile in them.

"You could have d-done that in the c-car," came out of Hinata's mouth before she had any idea of what was happening. She was so infuriated with herself that it was hard even to feel embarassed for a moment.

"True," agreed Itachi. He sliced a bread roll in half, buttered it, and traded his full plate for Hinata's empty one. "I find it is very profitable to spend some time in silence with someone before actually speaking with them. It can prove…educational."

"Edu…educational?"

"Indeed. I learned a great deal about you from our little car ride, Hinata. For instance, you have a crippling problem with nervousness, which leads you to fidget. You do _this--_" he tapped his fingers together--"when you are trying to think of something to say. Despite your own reserved nature, you are bothered by silence. However, this does not seem to stop you from taking advantage of it to observe more than most girls would in your situation." He tapped a manicured nail on his plate. "Do begin. The sweet cream butter is particularly delicious."

Hinata bit into her bread roll and found that it was, indeed, delicious.

"I am not in the least surprised at your observational skill. You are, after all, a Hyuuga, and your family sees everything." Hinata blushed a little; this was the motto on the Hyuuga family crest.

"The…the Uchiha family is f-famous for its eyes too," she said, not really knowing what else to say and feeling that "thank you" was inappropriate. What she had said was true--numerous analysts attributed the Uchiha family's business expertise to its keen insight and observational talents in the field.

"That is a misconception. Our observational skills are unremarkable. It is our _memories _which have enabled Sharingan Enterprises to attain its current position. You noticed that as well, I believe?"

That explained his complete recollection of the menu, his last visit to the restaurant, and even the waitress' name. He hadn't done anything openly ostentatious, but Hinata could see that it only took one look for Itachi to remember everything he needed to know about something.

"Photographic m-memory? Yes…It's v-very remarkable…"

"Useful, certainly." He smiled at her look of consternation. "I wouldn't worry. Your father didn't send you to me so that I could make you into a clone of myself. I personally do not feel that a glorified ability to copy anything you see is something you are in need of."

"I'm in n-need of a lot of things…"

"Less than you might think." The soup arrived and Itachi thanked the waitress. Hinata stirred hers stupidly, waiting for it to cool down, before realizing that it was in fact cold cucumber soup and she could begin eating immediately, as Itachi was doing. Itachi gracefully ignored this and continued their conversation.

"I believe you are capable of becoming an excellent heiress, Hinata. Your ability to notice things--to look underneath the underneath, an old friend of mine would say--is well developed already. And you seem remarkably free from conventional wisdom, which is something that is necessary in order to accomplish anything worthwhile. Your first assignment told me that."

"The r-revenge?"

"Indeed. I doubt that using Sasuke was your first instinct, or that of anyone you consulted?"

Hinata started. He was right; it hadn't been. Most of her early ideas or the suggestions she had received included physical harm or property damage in some way, particularly what she had gotten from her teammates and Hanabi. These suggestions had rung false to her for some reason, although at the time she hadn't paid attention to it.

"I didn't think it was. And yet, you were able to ignore your first instincts--and the conventional wisdom--in order to form an original plan of action. That is the most important aspect of the businessman's mind. I am glad to see that you are already using it unconsciously. Now that it has been articulated, it is a matter of incorporating it into conscious practice."

Hinata turned scarlet. She ignored conventional wisdom! She had a businessman's mind! She heard a vague pleasurable buzzing in her ears. At the same time, a few dozen inner voices--sounding suspiciously like Ino and Kiba--shrieked at her that she should be careful, because there was no way this was Itachi Uchiha. Itachi Uchiha was a frigid, glamorous genius. Since when did he show appreciation? Since when did he _praise_ anyone?

"You seem surprised," he said glibly, in the strange way he had of articulating exactly what she was thinking while sounding completely oblivious.

"I am!" she said, almost spilling her soup. "It's just--you…"

"Praised you?"

"Ye…yes…"

Itachi placed his soup spoon down and fixed her with an unusually direct, appraising stare. Coming from someone so difficult to understand, it was surprisingly sensual. She bit her lip. Stupid as it was, she had never really equated his good looks with good looks_ of the masculine variety._

"Of course I did," he said concisely. "You did well."

"W-well, I--"

"Hinata," he deadpanned. "If you have some sort of hackneyed expectation of myself as an inaccessible mentor who offers idiotic, noncommittal vagaries like 'interesting' whenever you do anything correctly, I would urge you to abandon it. I would not deserve my Konoha diploma if I were not fully aware of the fact that praise is as important as criticism for growth."

_A joke! He made a joke! _Hinata was starting to think Itachi had been replaced with some sort of cyborg. He couldn't possibly be so…so…_nice_? And yet, she rationalized that he really wasn't being nice in the standard meaning of the word. He was just being logical.

Itachi resumed eating. "I believe in growth, Hinata. And I am here to ensure that you experience it. After all…"

He looked up and gave her one of the smiles that had stunned her in the beginning, so surprising on his usual expressionless face.

"After all, you are my student."

**~X~**

"She's his _student_!'

Sasuke Uchiha was ready to kill something, and kill it dead. _This _was why he didn't make a habit of spending time with Hanabi Hyuuga, who, although technically his counterpart in the Hyuuga hierarchy, spent most of her time dragging others into her permanent state of seething irrationality. Finding an absence of things to murder in his car, he settled for viciously kicking his emergency brake.

"That doesn't mean he can't date-rape her," said Hanabi, in the tone of someone explaining something mind-bogglingly simple to someone who was not, in fact, in possession of a mind.

Sasuke almost drove the car into a telephone pole.

"My brother," he hissed, "is _not a date-rapist_!"

"Whatever," said Hanabi, clearly less than caring. She opened a compact mirror and began slathering on revolting purple lipstick, presumably to match the silk scarf that had been wrapped around her head several times and anchored in place by a pair of gigantic convex sunglasses. This was the least worrying aspect of her ensemble, as Hanabi had also donned a camel-hair men's overcoat, a ridiculous pair of Wellington boots, and a giant blue alligator-skin bag.

Sasuke hadn't complied with her instructions to disguise himself, but now he wished he had. No one wanted to be seen in public with what looked like a short middle-aged woman with abnormally bad fashion sense.

He had to admit, he was curious about Itachi's outing with Hanabi's sister. That was undeniable. But this was a little much.

"How exactly are we getting into Argent without a reservation?" he asked, pinching the bridge of his nose.

"You're the mighty Uchiha. You figure it out."

Sasuke wondered if it would be in extremely bad taste to bite her. He decided it would, in more ways than one.

"I guess I could make a phone call…"

"No!" screamed Hanabi for no real reason, despite having asked him to come up with something a second before. "They'll be _expecting _that! We have to get in _without _a reservation. Itachi will never know what hit him."

Normally, this would have been figurative. But you could never really tell with Hanabi.

"So…you have a plan, then."

"Hyuugas always have a plan!" shrieked Hanabi. "My sister had one, didn't she? Pretty much owned your arrogant git of a brother!"

Sasuke experienced a moment of 'she did _not _just go there,' although his manly Uchiha parts would have shriveled up and died before he ever admitted to phrasing it this way.

"She did not _own_--"

Hanabi gave him a sideways, calculating look that was utterly unnecessary, given that they were the only two people in the car. "I guess you had a role in it too, didn't you?"

He shrugged. It hadn't been his idea, after all.

"What'd she say to you?"

"What?"

"To get you involved! What'd she do? Did she pay you?"

"Uchihas," said Sasuke stiffly, "do not take _bribes_."

"Did she _threaten _you?" Hanabi managed to smile widely, even with the thick cake of lipstick on her mouth.

"Why, you--"

"Oh, don't hit girls, Uchiha," said Hanabi. "And don't grind your teeth like that, it's bad for you. The last time we were on Page Six, you were grinding your teeth, and need I remind you what the caption said? It said--"

"All _right_!" Sasuke snapped. "She said…"

He stopped. He had known the Hyuuga sisters for years, Hanabi as a prop at parties and Hinata as a classmate, and he had never really considered either of them paragons of intelligence. Of course, living with Itachi, it was hard to consider anyone else a paragon of intelligence, per se. Itachi burned brightly enough to cast everyone else into shadow. But that day, just for a moment, that shadow seemed to have lifted around Hinata Hyuuga. She'd said something that had actually made him _think_.

"She said…"

"Yeah?"

"She said it wasn't really a chance to get _her _revenge, but mine too."

"_What_?"

Sasuke didn't bother to explain. He'd understood the moment she'd said it, although he no longer felt any real pain about what had happened so many years ago. Unconsciously, he placed his hand over his wrist.

Itachi burned so brightly that sometimes, he couldn't help burning other people too.

Sasuke scowled at Hanabi. "It's really none of your business, Hyuuga."

"Neither is your big brother's _date_, Uchiha."

"It's not a date! For the last time, _she is his student_!"

"Yeah, and yet, you're still _dying _to know what's happening--admit it! You're _jealous_! It's not like he ever takes the time to train _you_, is it?"

Sasuke rolled his eyes. Unlike Itachi, he was not above wasting precious body movements to show disdain. Showing disdain was practically what he was madefor, although Hanabi Hyuuga seemed insulated from it by some thin, invisible coating of flippancy and calculated insanity. It was a pity he had no such coating. Her words hit closer to home than he'd have liked.

"That's not going to do us any good unless we can get in, Hyuuga."

"Oh, I know how to get in," she said airily.

"And you're going to tell me?"

She told him. This time Sasuke actually had to pull over to the side of the road and stop the car.

"_What_?"

Hanabi smirked. "You heard right, Uchiha. We pull this off, and your brother's never going to come near my sister _again, _contract or not. You want to shake on it?"

...And Sasuke had to admit that he did.

**~X~**


	6. Chapter 6

**A/N:** I am so sorry. Really.

However, I'll make it up to you with a special one-time-only offer! So I'd like to try something I've seen better writers than I do...We're nearing my six-month mark writing fanfic (and it's sort of disturbing how much I've written) and to thank all of you kind readers, who've made my experience so lovely thus far, I'd like to extend the opportunity to make **_requests_, **if you're so inclined**. **Is there anything you'd like to see me write? A pairing? A prompt? Assuming this would actually be appealing to anyone and I'm not just being conceited, cut loose with that, and I'll do a couple of custom-ordered one-shots. Because you're all wonderful, and I'd like to write you something you want to read (rather than cousin-cest no one cares about :D)

So, keep that in the back of your mind, yes? And now, on with the show. I promise it won't be so long until the next one.

* * *

Despite his firm handshake, which he had only really offered to indulge some of his long-held secret fantasies regarding conspiracies and being a mafioso, Sasuke Uchiha was beginning to have doubts. To put it mildly.

"This," he began, in what was intended to be a masculine tone of command that would instantly dominate the situation, "is the worst idea of any bad idea ever conceived. It makes the time when I let Naruto and Kiba persuade me to steal Hana's bikinis look like a—"

Just a moment too late, he realized whom he was talking to and clamped his mouth shut. Still, he could practically hear the click and whirr as Hanabi filed the information away in her mind under "Blackmail and Psychological Harassment—Uchiha, Sasuke."

"…_Anyway_," he continued, although his ears promptly lit up like traffic lights, "this is a bad idea."

"It isn't bikini stealing," said Hanabi sweetly.

"No. It's _illegal._"

"There's that."

They sat in silence for a few seconds, mentally masticating their separate gobbets of information: Hanabi, that Sasuke was into drag; Sasuke, that Hanabi was a complete raging psychopath.

"I don't think it's illegal if she's my sister," said Hanabi finally, in a tone that indicated that she actually just didn't care.

"Except that the one whom you're planning to hit in the balls with this little vendetta of yours is _my_ _brother_, not your sister."

"There's that, too. Listen, do you actually have a point, Uchiha? Or are you just—understandably—trying to prolong the desirable experience of being in a small enclosed space with me?"

Sasuke clamped his hand around his emergency brake and squeezed viciously, telling himself over and over that losing his temper with a fourteen-year-old was an act only the most sad and pathetically deluded of high school seniors would commit, and he, Sasuke Uchiha, was hardly among that demographic.

"_Hyuuga_," he ground out, trying not to dislodge any of his teeth. "This is plan is ridiculous. The repercussions, if anyone is actually so stupid as to rise to your bait, are not entirely legal. And I don't even understand what you're trying to accomplish. Why the hell are you so against Itachi training Hinata anyway? You _helped _with that ikebana thing, and that was pretty low."

Hanabi lifted the huge sunglasses off her face and rubbed them superfluously on the camel-colored overcoat. Sasuke caught the glint of the Amaterasu polish on her nails.

"I didn't know it was going to become a regular thing," she admitted. "I mean, that revenge assignment was okay—it was actually fucking awesome, if you really want to know—but the thing is, he can't keep doing shit like that. Hinata can't take it—I don't care what our psychotic dad thinks."

Sasuke stared at her. She really didn't seem the caring type, in the same way that carnivorous drooling beasts really didn't seem the domestic type.

"What? I'm just going to humiliate her before he does it first," she said, a touch defensively. "Don't look at me like that. No offense—actually, yeah, who am I kidding? Take offense—your brother is a _daft nut. _He broke your wrist, Uchiha."

"He did it to help me," said Sasuke automatically.

"You really think that? Then why'd you need _revenge_?" She held her fingers up and made air quotes around the word.

Sasuke opened his mouth and treated her to a rapid-fire riposte consisting of absolutely nothing, realized this belatedly, and forcibly closed his mouth again.

"…Fine. Itachi's a little…intense. Still, you can't just frame him like that…"

"Want to put money on that, Uchiha?"

"You know what I mean. Is it really worth it? What if your father decides to take legal action against him, or something? And seriously, anyone with two brain cells is going to trace it back to you. You're not exactly…subtle."

Hanabi scoffed. "Please. Don't talk about subtlety. If Hinata and I were ninjas, I would so own her any day. And if she can outsmart your crazed brother, I can definitely do it."

"And you're going to explain this to your father…how?"

She shrugged. "It's his own fault. Asking the acting vice-president of a rival company to train up his heir? Are you kidding? And besides, this entire _deal_—quote-unquote—of him and Itachi was like, under the table. He can't sue him or anything without making himself look like a prat."

This was, unfortunately, true.

"And…Itachi?"

"You mean, what if _he _sues Daddy or something?"

Sasuke nodded, then froze up at the sight of her venomous smile.

"Uchiha." She leaned closer to him, putting the purple lipstick dangerously close to his personal bubble of space. "I'm totally capable of pulling this off myself. You know that. Know why I'm bringing you with me?"

Sasuke glared.

"Because I _know _your brother's not going to say a word about anything if his precious baby brother's involved. He'll let himself be humiliated, just so that you don't get your ass kicked by my dad when he finds out he's been duped."

Sasuke's jaw tightened.

"Why are you being such a douche about this, Uchiha? It's not like this is some important part of your brother's life, or something."

"…_Fine_, Hyuuga, fine. Whatever. I don't want my brother wasting his time dealing with your sister either, so let's just get this over with. But we still don't have anything to work with."

Hanabi shifted the horrible alligator-skin bag, which was now starting to look far more sinister to Sasuke than a slightly hideous ladies' purse ever should.

"Oh, I brought what we need. You didn't think I'd come unprepared, did you?"

**~X~**

"You did not think I would come unprepared, did you?"

Hinata flushed. There were many epithets that could feasibly be applied to Itachi Uchiha in any situation, but unprepared, unfortunately, was not one of them.

"It c-could be a…coincidence," she said, feeling stupid simply looking at the small blinking dot on Itachi's mobile phone, which he held across the table for her perusal.

"You would be foolish to believe so. Sasuke's car left your residence about—" he checked his screen—"fifteen minutes after we did. It is now parked a block away from this restaurant, and has been for the last ten minutes."

Hinata wondered what kind of person felt the need to install self-updating GPS transmission software in his brother's car in the first place.

"You may be wondering why I felt the need to install self-updating GPS transmission software in my brother's car in the first place," said Itachi, in a truly horrifying display of either foresight or telepathy; she couldn't tell which, and at this point, she was starting to think there was really no difference. "I will simply say that since Sasuke has become a brooding teenager and refuses to enlighten me on the more salient features of his life, I have had to resort to expedient means to stay informed as to his company and whereabouts."

"S-so you didn't know this w-would happen…"

"No," said Itachi, retrieving the phone and casting a cool glance at the blinking dot. "I did have a suspicion that something untoward would occur, however. Your sister clearly has a low opinion of me."

"But she h-helped you w-with that ikebana thing, d-didn't she?"

"I very much doubt she is inclined to a repeat performance. She is quite protective of you."

Hinata gasped. It wasn't a word she would ever have applied to Hanabi, but she supposed, in a disturbingly twisted, dysfunctional sort of way—and how was it that everything related to Itachi Uchiha turned out in a disturbingly twisted, dysfunctional sort of way?—it made sense. It also made her head hurt.

"She d-does look out f-for my best interests," she admitted finally.

"I did not say that," said Itachi. "I said she was protective. There is a considerable difference. At any rate, this is beside the point. I am not sure why Sasuke—and Hanabi, I would presume—are loitering outside this restaurant, but I would guess it involves some sadly ill-thought-out attempt at sabotage."

"D-do you have any idea wh-what that m-might be?"

Itachi smiled, and Hinata suddenly had the thought that it was utterly ridiculous, the way such a beautiful smile always preceded the most awful news.

"I do not, Hinata. But you will, soon."

"…Why?"

"Because I have just decided that finding it out and preventing it from succeeding will be your second assignment."

**~X~**

"Did you find out her second assignment?"

"No," said Hanabi grudgingly. "I don't even know if she's gotten one yet. But it doesn't really matter. We can easily make it look like this was the second assignment. Thanks to your brother's demented imagination, no one's going to know that's not the case."

Sasuke wanted to make some kind of crack at her, but Itachi did have a slightly skewed sense of reality in which psychological manipulation and general apathetic toying with people's emotions were par for the course_, _so really, he had no words.

He also had no words to describe his relationship with Hanabi at this exact moment in time. The word "henpecked" wandered through his mind, struck up a brief correspondence with the word "laughingstock," then sauntered away arm in arm with the word "manipulated." The Greek chorus inside his head observed this calmly for a moment, then returned to its regularly scheduled program of the painful, gladatorial death of his masculinity.

Really, this seemed to be happening to Sasuke far too often lately.

He wondered if he gave off "MANIPULATE ME!" vibes or something. But that was absurd, and couldn't possibly happen, because no one manipulated Sasuke Uchiha.

Had Sasuke been even vaguely quick on the uptake he would have realized the obvious fallacies inherent in this statement, but had Sasuke been vaguely quick on the update, the obvious fallacies would not have existed anyway, so the entire point was moot.

"Are you listening to me, Uchiha?" snapped Hanabi, clearly incensed at his spontaneous foray into deep philosophical contemplation. "You know what to do?"

Sasuke gave her a disgusted look.

"Naturally, Hyuuga. I'm more than capable of executing any plan devised by the likes of _you_."

"Someone's PMSing!" sang Hanabi happily. "I would lend you some Midol, if you had a uterus, and if I cared. Anyway, I'm thinking this is a good time to go in."

"Hyuuga, I'm not really comfortable with this part of the—"

"That's great. Here I go. I have a text message all ready to send you when I'm set. It's not incriminating, because it's a code."

"It says 'I want to Gentle Fist you,' Hyuuga."

"Yes. That's the code."

" That's the most suggestive text message I've ever _seen_. What the hell does that even mean?"

"You don't actually need to know, Uchiha! It's a code!" shrieked Hanabi suddenly, lunging across the car and whapping him upside the head. He reached behind him and felt the incongruous sensation of mussed strands of hair.

For a second, he considered abandoning the entire plan. Some things were just not worth sacrificing.

"Just go," he said ultimately, after mentally swearing vengeance on Hanabi and her descendants for the unnecessary attack on his hair.

"I am," replied Hanabi. She put her sunglasses on again and carefully slid out of the sleeves of her oversize coat, so that her sleeves hung free and her arms were entirely enveloped inside. She wriggled experimentally for a moment, then carefully palmed her cell phone, shouldered her purse (literally shouldered, as her arms were in no position to hold it), and busted her way out of Sasuke's car by arbitrarily banging on the locks.

"I'll text you. Now, go and park the car somewhere that's not totally obvious, Uchiha. We're only a block away. This isn't some stupid mafia movie where that actually works."

This was another deathly insult to a vital part of Sasuke's psyche, but he took it with a degree of stoicism that would have made Shino clap him on the back. Hanabi beamed cheerily at him and scrunched her nose to adjust her sunglasses.

"Now, get out of here! You're wasting time!"

**~X~**

"You have wasted time, by the way," said Itachi, in a disinterested voice.

"Wh-what! How?"

"You could easily have gone to Sasuke's car and spoken to him directly to ask what he was planning, but now he has driven away." He raised the cell phone screen.

Hinata eeped. "C-can't I go talk to him n-now?"

"He is fairly far by this point. It will take you quite a few minutes to walk there, and unfortunately, by the time you reach him, it is very possible that he will already have put whatever he is planning into motion."

"…Oh."

She sat in silence for a few minutes, biting her lip. Itachi watched her calmly.

"It seems we are out of bread rolls," he said then, for absolutely no reason.

Hinata stared at him, decided that this was an inanely transparent attempt to distract her, and returned to her thinking.

If Sasuke had picked up Hanabi on the way to the restaurant—which made sense, as this was the only real reason he would have stopped at the Hyuuga residence at such a suspicious juncture, they would probably be entering the restaurant any minute now, although not necessarily together.

This seemed plausible, but not very intelligent. After all, Argent was a small restaurant. Hinata was more than capable of recognizing her own sister in a crowd, and Hanabi was not in any way stupid enough to overlook this. Hinata furrowed her brow, noting the way Itachi's mouth quirked up very slightly at the sight, and curled her fingers around her soup spoon in an attempt to ground her rapidly churning mind.

She would recognize her sister in a crowd. There was no doubt about that. Unless—

Hinata's jaw dropped.

"Itachi," she said firmly, the stutter gone, as it had been when she had spoken to Sasuke earlier. "Please excuse me. I want to make a phone call."

"Of course, Hinata," said Itachi politely. He waved the waitress back over. "While you are contemplating this assignment, I will place an order for our dinner. The _fondue jurassienne _is lovely—may I order for you?"

"Yes," she said, not caring. She rose, walked swiftly towards the ladies' restrooms, and hit her speed dial.

There was only one ring. There only ever was, with this particular number.

"Miss Hinata! What can I do for you?"

"Hello, Ko," she said, and didn't miss the sudden intake of breath as the Hyuuga manservant-cum-housekeeper registered her decisive tone. She rather relished it, but she filed it away to replay in her memory later. At this point, there was really no time, especially considering how long the task she had in mind was going to take.

"My sister isn't home, is she?"

"Miss Hanabi? No, Miss Hinata. I am told she left the house about half an hour ago."

"You weren't there?"

"No, Miss Hinata. I apologize for the—"

"It's fine, Ko. I have reason to suspect that my sister may have…disguised herself."

She cringed. It had sounded intelligent in her head.

"Very good, Miss Hinata."

Ko evidently either did not notice or care about the stupidity potential of this remark, or indeed, this entire situation. Manservants had seen it all. Hinata supposed they went through their own sort of deadpan-inducing training, probably closely related to whatever sort of systematic emotional cauterization Itachi Uchiha had undergone in his youth.

"I want you to check her closet for whatever clothes have gone missing, Ko, and tell me."

This was well within Ko's abilities, as he saw everything_—everything_, without exaggeration—that went on in the Hyuuga mansion, and had some sort of obsessive-compulsive inventory of most of Hinata and Hanabi's belongings internally catalogued in his mind for fear that something would be stolen.

"It will be done immediately, Miss Hinata. I am well acquainted with Miss Hanabi's room and closet, having cleaned it myself on a regular basis. However, if I may be so bold—is it not possible that she may have taken someone else's clothing with to disguise herself?"

Hinata closed her eyes. Itachi would not have set her an impossible assignment. Inhumanely difficult, yes—impossible, no. There had to be a way around this.

She forced herself to rethink the events of the past few minutes. There was an answer somewhere.

_Sasuke's car left your residence about fifteen minutes after we did…_

When she opened her eyes, she had the answer.

"It has to be hers, Ko. She left immediately after I did. She didn't have enough time to look through anyone else's clothing. Hers is all she knows well enough."

"Very good, Miss Hinata."

"Thank you, Ko. And, if you don't mind—quickly, please."

"There will be no hesitation, Miss Hinata."

Hinata hung up and wasted a few more minutes loitering in a pointless fashion. Then, figuring it would be advisable to start scoping out the restaurant herself, on the off chance Hanabi actually showed up in all her glory, she dropped to her knees behind a potted plant and began swiveling her head around like a human periscope. She stayed in this position for about ten minutes. She was well aware of how compromising the situation looked, but it was all right. Nobody went around looking for people behind potted plants.

"Excuse me, miss? What are you doing behind that potted plant?"

Hinata screamed in terror.

The waitress—thankfully, not hers—looked understandably as if someone had just hit her on the head with a plank and was now asking her to count the fingers. Hinata cast her eyes about desperately until they landed on Itachi, a few tables away from the potted plant—where, to her dismay, he was lounging elegantly and looking straight at her.

The man had a humiliation compass. It was official.

He eyed her as if she were a particularly vile growth he had found on something he was about to eat, and then he did something odd—with a very exaggerated gesture considering the ordinary precision of his movements, he slowly tucked a sheaf of hair behind his ear.

Hinata almost sobbed with relief. "I'm l-looking for an earring!" she proclaimed with manic relish.

The waitress continued looking as if she had been blindsided by a delivery truck.

"Miss…both your earrings are intact."

"OH…w-well, I—"

The phone, manifesting the habit of all phones to ring either at the most convenient or inconvenient of times, pealed out its silvery ringtone with a noise that, in this situation, sounded oddly like church bells ringing in salvation.

"I H-HAVE A PHONE C-CALL!" shrieked Hinata, opening the phone so quickly she nearly snapped it in half. "B-BYE!"

And she ran into the ladies' restroom as if the promised salvation was awaiting her there, which it technically was.

"H-hello?!"

"Miss Hinata," said Ko's calm voice. "She appears to have taken items of clothing that are not her own. Nothing is missing from her closet. However…"

"Wh-what?" Hinata nearly hyperventilated.

"She appears to have taken some other items with her. And you may be interested to hear what they are."

**~X~**


End file.
